


blood isn’t love

by nebulousviolet



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Gen, a neil sibling fic, but with a twist, i am so embarrassed, yet here we are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-22 05:59:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12475008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulousviolet/pseuds/nebulousviolet
Summary: “Your sister is annoying,” Andrew says.“She’s not my sister,” Neil replies, and he isn’t lying.





	blood isn’t love

**Author's Note:**

> this is inspired by my parents’ own struggles with siblings and family, and my own. blood doesn’t equate to love, and never will.  
> title taken from city of lost souls by cassandra clare

When Neil gets the letter, he has a half-mind to burn it.

The writer - whose name he refuses to acknowledge, whose existence he is convinced is a joke - has nearly illegible handwriting. Even without the contents of the damn thing, it’s enough to give him a headache. Still, the woman whose mother he shares can at least write her name properly, and that’s what sticks in his head for a good three days.

 _Isobel_.

It’s not an uncommon name, and it has an equally prevalent nickname to go with it - ‘Izzie’ is scrawled somewhere in the middle of the damned thing, breaking through the lines of text like a goddamn beacon - but it’s enough to set Neil on edge. He doesn’t know how the fuck she got his address, but it doesn’t matter. All it does is prove that this problem will not go away.

Sometimes she haunts his sleep. Her face, though he has never seen it, dances in front of him; a strange blur of Mary Hatford’s delicate features and the sharpness and grit of Nathan. Stupid, because him and Isobel do not have the same father, but that’s what his brain produces. Either way, it’s ruining his evenings, ruining to the point where Andrew bothers to comment on it.

”Your sister is annoying,” Andrew says.

”She’s not my sister,” Neil replies, and he isn’t lying.

Because who is Izzie Hatford, anyway? A girl who is eighteen months older than him and escaped Neil’s fate by the skin of her teeth. Someone who saw his face on TV and begged her uncle to put a name to it. She is a living ghost, a spiteful shade determined to make his life hell.

Except it’s not actually spite. In the barely-readable letters she sends, Izzie comes off as dryly funny, earnest, kind. Reminiscent of Dan, really, but when Dan calls Neil doesn’t feel sick to his stomach. Though he never replies once, Izzie sends and sends envelopes detailing her life, letters that Neil can’t help but read even if it drives him mad and makes his toes curl. 

“Tell her to fuck off,” Andrew suggests, when the mail thumps onto the doormat and his mouth is still on Neil’s hip. Well, it’s a little lower than that, but technicalities don’t matter. “Does she have a thing for lost causes?”

”If I reply, she might write more,” Neil deflects, and Andrew makes a noise in the back of this throat that probably signifies how weak of an excuse that is, but Neil’s witty response is swallowed by Andrew’s mouth on his.

Here’s the thing about Izzie: it’s easy to ignore her when she seems disembodied, but whenever someone mentions her, it’s as if she‘s screaming in Neil’s face for him to notice. And, around the time Andrew tells the media to _fuck off, I’m gay_ , Neil decides he has had enough with ghosts and spirits. Izzie is, irritatingly enough, real. Blood isn’t love, but it is a siren’s call; now Neil understands why Aaron and Andrew turned out like they did. It’s hard to resist the temptation of getting a glimpse of a real life _what-if_. So he writes back, just once, with his Skype username.

She calls him as soon as she gets the letter, or so he assumes.

”Hi,” Isobel greets, and she sounds like his mother did when she was tired, all harsh vowels and English-accent but not how they show it on TV. “I’ll turn video on.”

Izzie looks as similar to their mother as Neil looks to his father. Same colouring - strange, silvery blonde hair and eerily dark eyes - but a stronger jaw, identical lips but different nose. Not exactly pretty, but striking enough to cause a double-take. The resemblance between them isn’t immediately obvious, but they have the same high cheekbones and chin, the same shape to their eyebrows. Of course, Izzie’s face isn’t marred by scars and freckles and tattoos that were burned away, but he didn’t expect for it to be.

He looks at her for what feels like forever.

”Did Uncle Stuart tell you how Mom died?” he asks bluntly, the first thing he can say. His sister - except no, she’s not that - shrugs a little.

”He gave me a vague explanation,” she answers. “Said that your dad killed Mum and that you burned the body. But he won’t tell me anything, nowadays. I think it’s because he lost you to the Moriyamas, and he doesn’t want me to be in any deeper shit than I was born into.”

”Do you ever-“ his voice cracks, and he composes himself. “Do you ever think about what could’ve been?”

Isobel bites her lip - apparently they share a bad habit, too - and looks into the camera. “I never knew Mum,” she says. “I was this great secret. Uncle Stuart didn’t tell me that she married someone else and left me until I was about eight. I didn’t know enough to miss you, and you knew too much, I suppose. But that doesn’t make it any easier.”

”No,” Neil echoes. “It doesn’t.”

He hangs up, and all he can hear is the blood roaring in his ears. 

The thing is, him and Izzie have nothing in common. Through coincidence, she managed to have the childhood that he did not get, and though he cannot resent her for that, it is enough to cause a ravine between them. She is not his sister, no matter her mother. Because Neil already has sisters - Renee, Allison, Dan. Izzie is his flesh and blood, but they are memories, they are tangible, they have seen his shattered pieces and picked them up. They have been through trauma, too. And though Isobel may have known what her uncle was capable of, she still lived a comparatively easy life. It is incomparable to anything else, but Neil feels no affection for her, no deep desire to bond. There is nothing but a slight bitter taste on his tongue that his mother had the chance to refuse his father and did not take it. Neil cannot love Izzie, nor can he hate her.

It is an impossible stalemate. There is nothing he can do.

Izzie will understand. She can never look at his scars and see past them, the same we he can never look at her lack of scars. Blood so far has only ever gotten him more trouble than it’s worth.

”You’ve made an intelligent decision for once,” Andrew murmurs, as he watches Neil shred up every one of Izzie’s letters. “I’m proud.”

Is this what Andrew wishes he’d done with Aaron? But that is different. Neil and Izzie aren’t even fully related.

”If I need her, I’ll find her,” Neil says, and it’s true. He will, either through Stuart or Andrew’s infallible memory.

But he won’t need her. He has the Foxes; he does not need to take a step back into his past. Though it is unhealthy, this is what he wants. This is what he needs. Ghosts belong in the Underworld, no matter how good their reason for staying. She will either haunt him or get him killed, and ghosts should not have that power.

He deletes her number with a steadiness in his hand, and doesn’t hear from Isobel again.

**Author's Note:**

> comment on this if ur not homophobic xoxoxo  
> i mean, kudos are so last friday, but not leaving anything is so 2008  
> follow me on tumblr im semi-famous there: bookishplays


End file.
